


Unreality

by Nyx (Astriea)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Reality, M/M, Night Vale as a normal town, memory confusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-11 23:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3337001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astriea/pseuds/Nyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos loved Cecil.</p><p>	That was easy to remember. It was simple, non-complicated in theory only, but an undeniable fact just the same. Carlos wished that everything else in his life was like that.<br/>He isn't sure right now what exactly is real. All he has to do is open his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Carlos loved Cecil.

That was easy to remember. It was simple, non-complicated in theory only, but an undeniable fact just the same. Carlos wished that everything else in his life was like that. 

Carlos’s life was a practice in confusion. It never seemed to be that concerned about keeping all of the moments that made it up not contradict each other. Carlos wasn’t concerned with this that often. He was also not aware of it that often. Either by some form of manipulation or a long repressed subconscious choice, he only seemed to be able to think of it in times like this. Peaceful moments when his eyes were closed and he had nothing to do for at least a little while.

Sometimes, he opened his eyes right as he became aware of the it. The unsteady, second guessing that made him feel a nauseating conviction that his life was not the same that it had been before. This change, he sometimes felt with a paralyzing sense of dread, might come from far more than moving to a different town

Though, knowing Night Vale, that might be the reason after all. At first, when Carlos was a new arrival, he was quick to blame the town for all of the strange and unsettling things that went on in his life. The residents often made this easy. While they denied that their town was anything but normal. they did not say that, for example ‘there is no man eating being from before-what-we-naively-call-time (Cecil's words, not his) in the rec center.’ This is an unavoidable fact. They all see the squid like tentacles that sprawl out of the rec-center when the weather is pleasant, and they all hear that chants and blood sacrifices that are used to keep it from eating random citizens.

Carlos first thought that it might be a holographic projection, when he saw people walk through it. He learned through running some tests, and then by finally being informed by a citizen who took pity on him, that it was real. It was just under a spell that made it for the most part, exist in a very small mirror universe, as to not disrupt traffic. Though if you went inside the rec-center for every day but the third of each month, there would be no sign of the being. The rec-center manager said that it normally left everything alone as long as you let it eat the occasional basketball.

This was a typical example of Night Vale weirdness. Strange to be sure, but having some semblance of some sort of twisted logic. Carlos was now second guessing that the memory confusion was not normal Night Vale weirdness. He didn't know how it could have possibly gotten this out of hand. 

He also had memories involving the resident with tentacles in the rec-center. Except for it was a small squid that the manager had been given two years ago by friend of his. He kept it on the front desk.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, Carlos found both options having an equal potential of being real. He had memories backing up both. He would expect when he opened his eyes, to find that the the more fantastical version of the rec-center was just a detailed day dream, a product of his life long hyperactive imagination. Except, for the version with the front- desk squid seemed less likely. Memories like that were more faint in Carlos’s mind.

The fantastical memories had more evidence to them. He can remember hooded figures, and a strange soul-chilling dog park. He can remember the carnage from Valentine's day. If he moves his hands to anywhere but his sides, he could touch some of the scars that he feels certain that he earned. If he speaks in anything but a faint whisper, he might be able to hear a voice that came about through throat spiders or a really bad infection from inhaling chemicals. 

He chooses not too. He doesn't know which life he more wants to live. Both would be bearable, neither are Cecil-less. He must be insane for having the suspicion that the one with with the multitude of impossibilities is more likely. That, in this peaceful time, is nothing more than a place for his mind to go too when it is bored.

Night Vale is in both. 

In one, he came there because he begged Slyvia to let him be the one to get the funding for the research trip. He better stop kidding himself, he begged Sylvia in both versions. He arrived, and soon realized that they stories might be true. Nothing made sense according to the rules of reality as he knew it. Radiation, earthquakes, time, nothing.

In the version with the fainter memories however, Night Vale was used during the cold war by the government to dump toxic waste. It took so long for the scientific community to find out, because nothing seemed to be happening. The people of Night Vale were not overly affected by cancer or disease. The equipment that various scientist had brought to Night Vale dictated that it would be a miracle for any semblance of healthy life to form at all. Night Vale didn't like outsiders telling it what they thought was real.

The people of Night Vale were the reason that Carlos was really there. The Humanities department were the first to realize that something was not quite right with the town.  
The town only started cooperating with the national census seven years ago. They do not care about what the rest of the world think time is. Carlos found this out the first day when he realized that the sun set eight minutes too late, at least according to the local clocks, which hardly agreed with each other either. Not knowing what time it was made Carlos feel like he was in a sort of limbo. It was also incredibly hard to find any information on the town anywhere. Even most road maps didn't say anything about it.

And then there was Cecil. Who was something else entirely.

Cecil had been there when Carlos spoke to the town the first time. Carlos was too busy trying to tell the locals why exactly he thought invading their town was a good idea to notice him. A surprising amount of people showed up for the event, though Carlos had the suspicion that this was just an excuse to get to the food that some of the people had brought. He had been focusing the most on the agents in the back of the room. For some reason, the government didn't want the world to know about Night Vale. Like a little kid who was told that they couldn't touch something, Carlos was only inspired to search harder for the town’s secrets.

Cecil was the voice of the local radio show, Welcome to Night Vale. It didn't matter whether or not Cecil actually announced to the town that he fell in love instantly with Carlos. It was easy to tell either way. Carlos did think that one of the attractions of the fantastical universe was that was the one where Cecil announced his attraction on the air. It saved Carlos a lot of second guessing.

The reason why Cecil’s show was such a hit was that Cecil did not tell the news exactly as it was. He put a spin on the normal city events. He would joke about politicians or talk about town myths as if they were real. He had confessed later that he sometimes wasn't sure that anyone was listening to his show at all. He tried to see how much story telling he could get away with without anyone complaining. His voice was another important factor to his success. It was a voice that sounded like it was born to be on the radio. Carlos soon grew dependent of that voice to make sense of his day.

From there, the memories that pointed to the likelihood of Carlos living in a sane universe became scarcer. One of the memories that he kept reviewing was the time that he talked to Cecil about the town. They were having coffee at the Moon Light All Night Diner. Cecil’s whole attitude seemed to go from expectant for something, to disappointed within minutes of their meeting. When Carlos asked, he said that it was nothing.

While Carlos had wanted at first to just get the phone numbers of important people, he then realized that he was sitting across from one of the best people to give him a cultural insight to the town from a native’s point of view. This was, of course, not a half-baked excuse to coax Cecil to talk to him some more.

One of the first things that he asked was how the town got its name. Cecil smiled at this, like he was about to tell Carlos an amusing or terrible story. It was sometimes hard to tell with Cecil. “Our founders didn't like the sun much.”

“Really, who were they?”

“Cultists, they believed that the moon would hide them from the outside world, which they thought had done them wrong.”

“And so they wished for eternal darkness? Didn't they realize that they would not have been able to grow food if it was always dark?” Carlos felt like kicking himself for that insensitive of a comment. If he got thrown out of town for this, Sylvia is going to kill him for sure.

Luckily, Cecil seemed to take this as a good humored joke. “I guess you pinpointed one of the reasons that this town was never super big on agriculture. Desert Bluffs always had more water anyways. You know, their founders didn't even have the creativity for their towns name like we did. They literally named their town after the bluff, in the desert that they built it on.”

Now they were getting somewhere, Night Vale’s hatred of Desert Bluffs went way beyond their sports games. “Who founded Desert Bluffs?”

“More cultists, except for this time they were sun loving weirdos. We would have nothing to do with them if they weren't our closest neighbors. Some of them later got sick of their town and came back here. They merged with part of the Night Vale cultist groups to form the beams church.” At this, Cecil crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward on them, he smiled, and Carlos had to remember what he was trying to interview Cecil about. “How about your town?”

“What?” Carlos was not used to the people that he was interviewing asking about him. He had briefly forgotten that Cecil was a reporter, and he had to remind himself, that was the only reason that he was even here. 

“The place that you are from, what's it like?” Mistaking the slightly panicked look from trying to recall how to form proper sentences on Carlos’s face as shock, he smiled wider. “Oh, come on, do you seriously think that I would pass up a chance to interview Night Vale’s most beloved celebrity? I do have journalistic integrity to uphold after all.” The memory fades to static as Carlos gives in and tells Cecil about where he is from. Truthfully, he hadn't really thought much about it in a while.

In one of the brighter memories, Cecil and Carlos were sitting next to each other in Mission grove Park. Carlos had met Cecil there when he was out trying to figure out if there is anything weird in the radiation in the trees. This was made difficult by all of the people that were under the trees. Poetry week was in full swing, and sitting under the foliage seemed to be a favorite writing spot. 

Cecil was in the far edges of the park. In a area deserted save for a few trees surrounding a square monument made up of brown stone. Carlos wouldn't have even known that he was there if there was not a quiet sobbing coming from the opposite side of the monument. 

Carlos tried to make his footsteps silent when he approached the monument, but the sobbing quieted just the same. Cecil was huddled on the ground, when he saw Carlos, his face flooded with red as he rubbed the water out of his eyes.

Carlos didn't know what to do. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ rarely worked with kids, never mind full grown adults. This one however, was clearly suffering, and was somehow his friend. The trees forgotten, Carlos sat down next to Cecil.

They sat there for a minute. Carlos staring straight ahead and Cecil staring at his feet while picking grass out of the ground. “Its Dana.”

Carlos cautiously turned his head to look at Cecil. “Your intern?”

“Former intern sadly. Her father managed to convince the court system that he was the one who deserved custody of her. He lives in the next state.”

“Oh, I thought that she was reporting on the Dog Park for your show?”

“Yes, her father came a day early.” Carlos was struggling to find something to say. He had never gone through something like this, and had no experience to draw from to understand what Cecil seemed to be going through.

“I guess you guys were friends?” Interns left the show all of the time. Injury on the job was common, and most of them often moved on to better things after a few months. Cecil had never been so broken up on them moving on.

“Yes, I suppose that she was. I never really thought of her as that, I am… was her boss. Not to mention the age difference. She was amazing you know, as an intern and a person.” Carlos waited for Cecil to go on. “She really didn't want to go. She barely knows the man and her brother is not going with her.” He stopped talking for half a minute seemingly dreading what was coming next. “She got an injury on the job. A stapler fell on her head during the sandstorm. For a while she was seeing double.”

That's why Cecil is so worked up about this. “Its not your fault that Dana got injured. She had just the likelihood of getting injured at home.”

“She said that too. When she learned that I held myself responsible for her injury, she became more worried about me than herself.” Carlos realized that Cecil and Dana were very similar in that regard.

”She doesn't think that she will be able to go come back anytime soon. Not before she is eighteen.”

“When will that be?” 

“The June after this this one.” Sixteen, it was easy to forget that most of Cecil’s interns were just teenagers.

“Nearly two years. That is a long time to not see someone.”

“She promised to text me about how she is doing.” In both versions of Night Vale, Dana did.


	2. Chapter 2

It was funny what memories got preserved in his mind, and what ones were lost to static mere seconds after they were made. He could still remember his childhood very well. The static there was the natural decay of memories that one expected to experience over time. It was after that, when he started attending university, that the contradictions started to appear in earnest. He can remember little from that time in both the fantastical and the normal-ish version of events. He had both attended and taught for a while in both versions before coming to Night Vale. Sylvia was in both too. He supposed that she wouldn't stand being left out of anything related to that school if she could help it. 

The fantastical version of his university was the University of What it is. Admittedly it sounds like it should belong in a comic book. It wasn't magical exactly. At least not the type of magic that is interwoven into Night Vale. More like the type of magic that exists between the pages of books. Still, there were enough memories that got through the static to know that there was a strong possibility that he had gone there. 

He didn't know the name of its counterpart. He only had the impressions of memories from it.They were like watching shadows on a cave wall. He couldn't even begin to guess how distorted they were from what had really occurred in the true version of events. Just like the rest of his version of that reality really. He always had been one to support the underdog against all the evidence that it was not the best idea for his continued health. 

He was not a neuroscientist however and therefore didn't have much knowledge on how memories work. At least, he was sure that he was not, he based this assumption on the fact that he couldn't remember ever studying brains in Night Vale. Whatever he was before he came to Night Vale didn't really matter. The town stripped away whatever type of scientist that you had claimed to be before crossing its borders and left you as just a Scientist. He supposed that this also applied to non scientist. The town turned you into a self that was both poisoned and pure.

Carlos did his best to derail that line of thought. He was never in any sort of stable state when he started thinking of the town as a living being that had a will of its own. He liked to think that everyone had their own autonomy to do as they please. He valued free will too much to care for a thing like destiny, no matter how sweet or romantic the foreshadowing might be.

Strex Corp existed in both worlds. Of course it did. His luck only went so far. Carlos finally worked up the nerve to ask Cecil about his new bosses a few weeks after the management change. They were at Cecil’s place, it must have been the more normal version of reality because Cecil had made no move to disable any of the hidden cameras and bugs in the room when the discussion had started. 

When he got around to asking about them, his boyfriend exploded. “You remember how you called my former bosses both weasels and reptilian weasels before?” Carlos had come up with this description in previous conversations when Cecil had told him about the former station management, who had been a whole brand of awful in their own right. “Well, my new bosses don’t even deserve that name. They are now toxic, primordial ooze, deer, weasels!”

“Do you want to talk about it?” In both versions of Cecil, this question could be either deflected with varying levels of skill and subtleness, or be the key to massive flood gates.

It turned out that this was a flood gate question. 

“At first I thought that they would be good bosses. They actually talked to their employees face to face, which is certainly a step up from needing to interpret cryptic emails all of the time, but trust me Dear Carlos, they showed their true colors soon enough.” Seeming to not notice Carlos’ blush, he drew in a deep breath before continuing.“They started firing people a week after they arrived. They said that it was not cost effective to have so many paid employees since we have interns. Not that there is a crowd of prospective interns anymore.” Against all reason, interning at the radio station seemed to be a highly sought after position. “There is suddenly better places to earn college credit around town. Not that I blame them. There is no place for a sales department in a radio station. You can’t buy community spirit. I’m reasonably sure that they would replace me with a robot radio host robot if they were able.”

“Isn't that what you thought Kevin was until you met him in person?” Carlos would gladly give up his backbone to remember that conversation. The memory version of Cecil smirked a little at the notion of the overly cheery radio host that he had met during the two day sand storm being confined to a body of wires and circuits.

“He might as well be, for as much as he depends on his parent company, the word around the station is that he can’t leave even if he wants too. Oh yes perfect Carlos, it turns out that he is dependent of his parent company for a drug that only they can make. That vile man has a rare disease. It is not very obvious on the outside, only for temper tantrums that he throws every once and a while and a taste for blood. I would say that it serves him right, only even that monster doesn't deserve that kind of punishment for his multitude of vile sins.”

“What kind of punishment would you recommend?” Carlos remembered needing some time to absorb the new information that was dropped on him already. 

“Community service at the public library of course.” Having grown up with the Night Vale’s version of a public library, which boasted the most unhelpful librarians on the planet as well as a race of super vampire bats, it was no surprise that Cecil had low expectations of libraries everywhere. Though, Carlos would be hard pressed to remember if either version of Desert Bluffs even had a library. It didn't seem like something that Strex Corp would like. Too much knowledge that was not work related for their tastes.

There were still some good memories from the Strex occupation. The ill fated condos had been a Strex sponsored project. They had sparked something truly wonderful in Carlos and Cecil’s relationship. Carlos had first been drawn to them from reports of hallucinogens in the buildings. After a few minutes on the site however, Carlos had forgotten completely why he had gone to the site in the first place. He had heard Cecil’s voice on the radio and had scrambled to call his boyfriend to tell him that he was not in fact trying to get a measure of independence from him, please stop worrying about it on public radio. It actually is painful to listen too. He is in fact here because of the science opportunities that seemed to have formed in the area of the condos.’ 

Somewhere in that conversation, where he tried to say all of those things and hardly succeeded, he realized that buying a condo would not be such a bad idea. He had no plans on letting Cecil go, no matter the relatively short time that they were dating. Moving in together seemed to be a logical way to declare his intentions of not going anywhere. 

The next hour or so was fuzzy in his mind. Both from their disuse and the levels of toxic gas that he had inhaled. Cecil had taken it upon himself to rescue him during the weather. Dave and Rachelle were passed out by that point.They had been in the hands of some of the townsfolk that had dragged them out of the area. They would have gone after him as well if the whole area hadn't been declared off limits by some Strex employees that had suddenly appeared on the scene. 

While he couldn't remember what Cecil had done to get him out, he remembered the conversation that they had afterwards word for word. Even now he felt a yearning for that kind of life with Cecil. He wanted Sunday morning stasis that he once had run from, but now wanted to share with Cecil. It seemed like it took another event that could have killed him to jump-start both versions of himself into proposing a relationship upgrade that could achieve that kind of peace.

He realizes that he doesn't know how one of the versions of himself got it into his head that he should inform the radio host that ‘yes I happen to care about you a good deal as well, maybe we should do something about that?’ He had the feeling that it had nothing to do with a civilization of tiny warriors under the pin retrieval area of lane five, he still felt a sensation that was similar to a punch in a gut when he realized that that important memory was gone. He didn't even know where it had disappeared from. He covered his eyes when he blinked away the tears that had started running down his face.

**Author's Note:**

> There should be one or two more chapters of this. I will expand this to talk about more of Carlos's memories and maybe explain what exactly is going on.


End file.
